RIFT: Group-Relative RL Fine-Tuning for Realistic and Controllable Traffic Simulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Chen, Keyu, Sun, Wenchao, Cheng, Hao, Zheng, Sifa
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Chen, Keyu
Sun, Wenchao
Cheng, Hao
Zheng, Sifa
author_facet Chen, Keyu
Sun, Wenchao
Cheng, Hao
Zheng, Sifa
contents Achieving both realism and controllability in closed-loop traffic simulation remains a key challenge in autonomous driving. Dataset-based methods reproduce realistic trajectories but suffer from covariate shift in closed-loop deployment, compounded by simplified dynamics models that further reduce reliability. Conversely, physics-based simulation methods enhance reliable and controllable closed-loop interactions but often lack expert demonstrations, compromising realism. To address these challenges, we introduce a dual-stage AV-centric simulation framework that conducts imitation learning pre-training in a data-driven simulator to capture trajectory-level realism and route-level controllability, followed by reinforcement learning fine-tuning in a physics-based simulator to enhance style-level controllability and mitigate covariate shift. In the fine-tuning stage, we propose RIFT, a novel group-relative RL fine-tuning strategy that evaluates all candidate modalities through group-relative formulation and employs a surrogate objective for stable optimization, enhancing style-level controllability and mitigating covariate shift while preserving the trajectory-level realism and route-level controllability inherited from IL pre-training. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RIFT improves realism and controllability in traffic simulation while simultaneously exposing the limitations of modern AV systems in closed-loop evaluation. Project Page: https://currychen77.github.io/RIFT/
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_03344
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RIFT: Group-Relative RL Fine-Tuning for Realistic and Controllable Traffic Simulation
Chen, Keyu
Sun, Wenchao
Cheng, Hao
Zheng, Sifa
Robotics
Machine Learning
Achieving both realism and controllability in closed-loop traffic simulation remains a key challenge in autonomous driving. Dataset-based methods reproduce realistic trajectories but suffer from covariate shift in closed-loop deployment, compounded by simplified dynamics models that further reduce reliability. Conversely, physics-based simulation methods enhance reliable and controllable closed-loop interactions but often lack expert demonstrations, compromising realism. To address these challenges, we introduce a dual-stage AV-centric simulation framework that conducts imitation learning pre-training in a data-driven simulator to capture trajectory-level realism and route-level controllability, followed by reinforcement learning fine-tuning in a physics-based simulator to enhance style-level controllability and mitigate covariate shift. In the fine-tuning stage, we propose RIFT, a novel group-relative RL fine-tuning strategy that evaluates all candidate modalities through group-relative formulation and employs a surrogate objective for stable optimization, enhancing style-level controllability and mitigating covariate shift while preserving the trajectory-level realism and route-level controllability inherited from IL pre-training. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RIFT improves realism and controllability in traffic simulation while simultaneously exposing the limitations of modern AV systems in closed-loop evaluation. Project Page: https://currychen77.github.io/RIFT/
title RIFT: Group-Relative RL Fine-Tuning for Realistic and Controllable Traffic Simulation
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03344